Monday, September 24, 2012

June 16 - day off

Lapland Longspur, a common bird even in camp - sometimes singing from the tops of our tents

As of today two of the eight people
will have the day off each day, to let people recharge, have some downtime, and
stay on top of data entry. Brad and I got today off so that we could sleep in
after the Buff-breasted Sandpiper extravaganza last night. With the late
bedtime of after 3am I slept until almost noon!

View of the cook tent looking north. Barrels of food, water filtration units, and buckets of water make up most of our patio area.

One of the funny things about sleep
up here is that it doesn’t really matter when you sleep, since the light is
basically always the same from inside your tents. Without a time-telling device
you have no way of knowing the time at all, not even a general idea if it is
cloudy or foggy! The other day I woke up at 3am, and at the time thought it was
already 9am for some reason – luckily I was incorrect.

Nice and bright in my tent here - you wouldn't know it was around 3am!

The wind is present again today in
the low teens, but the sun is still abundant. Most of the day today just felt
like an elaborate camping trip: sleeping in late, sitting around writing and
eating, and even calling home! The “camping experience” was broken only by
duties such as data entry and carrying a gun around – not your standard camping
activities.

2 comments:

If you took 400 photos in one evening, how did you keep from filling up your memory card for the whole 6 weeks? Did anyone fire their rifle during your stay? Did you carry your rifle at all times while out and about?

I took 400, and edited it down to just over a hundred or so from that night. Most days I wasn't as prolific, and I also brought my computer along as an external harddrive - I charged it using the solar panels and uploaded photos twice during my time there. I ended up with just under 1,000 photos from the time there on my SLR, and 800 or so from my iPhone.